I doubled down on our USO June $35 puts on Tuesday afternoon and listened to your posting yesterday and sold 1/2 midday and the rest I sold (luckily) at the top of the market yesterday with the last 1/4 of my contracts at 100% return in less than one day!

- Samlawyer

Nice call on the QQQ puts this morning Phil. I bought 10 at .13 this morning for fun day trade. Just closed at .95. Sweet hedge for the day!

- RevTodd64

Way back did 20 of your suggested short BP Jan 11 26 P @ 4.3 now .85 — sold half. this am —
paid for a years sub AGain!! thank you very much!

- Ban2

I have been with this site since the beginning and i have learned more the past 3 years than the previous 10. Information and great commentary are abound. The traders on the site are second to none and my portfolio has benefited greatly.

- Kustomz

WOW, look at DRYS go. Nice call on the entry the other week Phil. I got 200 at $6.66 and sold a 7.5 call for $.50, then on the tear today sold another 7.5 call for $1. This should puts me in at an average of $5.91 and called away at $7.5 for a profit of $300+ after commisions. Once again another Phil trade pays for this months membership.

- Craigzooka

Very nice in and out on those USO puts again, easy way to get the subscription covered in just a couple of hours.
Thanks again Phil and everyone here contributing to such intelligent and informative discussion! I have wasted countless hours reading "professional newsletters" and message board blather over the years. Have learned a great deal here in a very short time. I have sent out a number of invites to friends and family for stockworld!

- Eyezz

I have followed a lot of Phil's picks over the last several years and made money using the exact option strategies he outlines. Of all the contributors on SA, he offers the most actual and ready to implement advice that has put money in my account. Many of us on SA actually are sad when we don't see Phil's postings for an extended period.

- Brenteaz

Phil - I'm with you just little bit longer than a month and you can not imagine how happy I am now, and not just because my P/L improved ( and I'm sure that it will be even better), but I found that the worst thing in trader's carrier is a LONELINESS. Here I found so many bright good guys, I looked for this service for years.
THANK YOU AND TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF BECAUSE I PLAN TO STAY HERE AND RIDE THIS CREASY MARKET WITH YOU FOR ANOTHER 20-30 YEARS

- Tchayipov

Well that was a fun day. Cashed out my GS 140 calls for about 35% profit and my AAPL calls for 38% gain. Not bad for 40 minutes of work. Back to 85% cash.

- Singapore Steve

Maya, After years of being pretty good at picking stocks I still managed to lose almost as much as I made.All the reading Phil asked us to do as a new member (And everything else I can get my hands on lately) has revealed my Achilles Heal.Good stock picks do not necessarily make money. My problem was swinging for the fences. Since becoming a member Jan 1 this year and getting into to scaling into small trades I am amazed at the steady profit growth I have experienced already while not worrying about getting killed. And having fun doing it.. Phil, Thanks for the education, the help you give and the chance to learn more and get better. Also thanks to all the members who have answered the few questions I had when your not around.

- Ricpar

Phil, I followed your investing ideas in LTP quite closely. It seems your insightful fundamental analysis knowledge serves you v. well. I get entertained and they are profitable.

- Investwizard

Phil — gotta thank you for your advice this week, and especially today. I took many aspects of your advice this morning, with all of my shorts -- being prepared on the short side, selling into intial excitement, taking the money and running, not being greedy. I also made money on the your /QM and /YM calls. It used to be I would be terrified of weeks like this one. Now, it feels somewhat comfortable, for want of a better word.

- Escohen5

I read with great interest your statement the other day that the DX is unlikely to break 76 or there will be great hell to pay, torrential amounts of tears shed, and gnashing of dentures all over the world. Well. I have had several short DX contracts in the $78ish range during the last month and upon your two statements 1) don't be greedy, and 2) 76 could be a bottom, I yesterday put a buy GTC order to close my positions at 76 and for some inexplicable reason the DX spiked down after the close and now I can safely say that once again you have confirmed for me that you have been one of the best investment services I have yet to come across. Almost to the point that I'm beginning to think that maybe I'm completely wrong about my political stance as well. Almost. In any event, I wanted you to know that this has been my third execution based on your comments and recommendations that I have followed and this one has also worked to my advantage. My subscription fee has been more than justified for the next year and there's some left over to pay for my stay in Toronto this week, dinner at Joso's in the Yorkville section of town. If I smoked I'd have a Montecristo to salute you. Be well, stay well.

- Flipspiceland

Phil, 26% on the week for the 20% I day-trade, and since drinking the kool-aid last fall, the whole portfolio has doubled. Have a great weekend !!

- JRW III

Phil – just wanted to say a sincere thank you for teaching me how to offset, hedge, roll, and not panic. My account is up 10% in the last two weeks, and far from panic, this is becoming great fun. Thanks again,

- Deano

Phil: Once again thanks for those inciteful comments, and the old links to Sage's portfolio management (I hadn't read before). I'm an experienced stock trader, but over the last 3 or 4 months have come to appreciate options trading here at PSW, and the consistency of your many premium-selling strategies. It is liberating to have to worry less about getting direction right and being able to generate 5% MONTHLY returns with close to delta-neutral positioning. Much appreciated!

- Neverworkagain

Phil: Thank You!
Scaling, Scaling, and Scaling… then patience, patience, patience I'm 2 to 1 short and even on a day the broad market is up I had my largest one day gain in years. The last 6 weeks in fact have been great. I really feel I've learned to use some tools that will enable me to deal with the turbulence ahead. Selling short calls is definitely my preferred approach. Even allowed me to play golf this afternoon while the premium melted away and shoot a career low round. I owe you man!

- Lincoln

Phil: I have 263 positions - 70% in options ( balance stocks) in three portfolios with a value of 3 mil. YTD profit is about $750,000. Thanks!

- Gel1

Hi Phil,
Thanks for the free disaster hedge ideas. I implemented variations of two of them on SDS bull call spreads and EEM bear put spreads (haven't done the TZA yet) and they really hedged my short term longs nicely today. Makes it seem a lot less like gambling.
You are the man (of the people)!

- Howard Roake

Phil/CLK4 – Perfect! Saw the answer 1 min after my post…out with $740 on two contracts. Thanks again for the education.

- Jeffdoc2004

Phil, i wanted to thank you again for helping me protect future stock allocations at work - finally, i feel like i am owning my own destiny with stocks vs. letting the market dictate what you get – thanks again.

- Nramanuja

Phil Thank you very much, I appreciate your help and wisdom.

- CdsdpDean

Dear Phil, I have followed along with your commentary and alerts and have been flabbergasted at your quick analytical skills and your journalistic skills to explain it clearly. In a little over three weeks I have cleared almost 1000.00 dollars and got an intensive education at the same time. I would like to immediately upgrade my membership. It is hard for me to follow all evening as I am in Tokyo but I can join you at the beginning of the market and read the next day.

- Tokyolife

HOTT / Got great trades with it: Enter 6.75 at open, out at 7.18 (avg) at 10:13
Reentered at 7.00 and out all 7.11 few minutes ago- Was a small play but I collected enoght for next month PSW subscription.

- Spider

Phil - Rode the /QM down from 99.65 at 7pm and now I'm taking your advice, taking the $$ and going to enjoy a restful night sleep. I don't post often so I want to say thanks for sharing your incredible market acumen with all of us. Your site has a unusually talented group of investors (and some characters) and I enjoy my days trading more because of it.

- DaveW

Phil - FAS - I dont know whether to be happier I averaged down and sold calls or that I got myself out of FAZ the other day…thanks for that help

- BCFla

Nice intraday trading calls this week Phil. You have me hooked on trading SPY options analogously to your DIA moves. I paid some tuition the last few weeks but I think I have the hang of it. Don't be greedy and be happy with 0.05 to 0.10 and sometimes you're lucky with much bigger moves. Thanks for the training!

- TmDecay

/NKD- Kownichiwa Cowboy!! One week of patience and scaling in and out pays off. This is a testament to Phil's fundamental analysis with the PSW technique. Thanks Phil.

- JohnO

GOOG, NFLX and AAPL all bought last hour Friday. Sold into the excitement the first hour today for an average of 15% on the options. And lots of them. Thanks again Phil for teaching me so well.

- lflantheman

Brilliant covering of the arcane, the profane , but never the mundane!
Easy to understand the reason for your huge following, Phil, and why you have become a must read on my daily agenda. Please accept my complete appreciation.

DB - Deutsche Bank AG – Heavy trading traffic in Deutsche Bank put options this morning, one week before the investment banking firm is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings, may mean some traders are bracing for a pullback. Shares in DB are currently up 0.40% to stand at $43.80 as of 12:40 p.m. in New York. The single-largest put trade on the stock today was the purchase of 9,500 puts at the April $40 strike for a premium of $2.45 each. Though the put options were not marked as a spread against stock, it is possible the put buyer seeks to protect the value of shares already in his or her portfolio. Alternatively, the investor may be taking an outright bearish stance on DB over the next three months. In the latter scenario, the trader may profit if Deutsche Bank’s shares plunge 14.3% to breach the effective breakeven point at $37.55 at April expiration. Meanwhile, the purchase of a 2,000-lot Mar. $35/$45 put spread at a net premium of $2.75 per contract yields profits – or downside protection – to its owner in the event of a 3.5% decline below the breakeven share price of $42.25. Traders populating DB options are overwhelmingly favoring puts over calls ahead of earnings, with today’s put-call ratio hovering just below 15.0 and overall put-call interest greater than 1.4.

ATHN - athenahealth, Inc. – One cautiously optimistic investor appears to have purchased a sizable position in athenahealth put options this morning in order to hedge a long position in the stock. Shares in the provider of cloud-based business services for physician practices rose 1.05% to $57.91 this afternoon, extending gains realized earlier in the week on the heels of a new…

URBN - Urban Outfitters, Inc. – Apparel and accessories retailer Urban Outfitters popped up on our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner due to heavy trading traffic in near-term calls. Shares in the battered stock gained 4.3% in early-afternoon trade to stand at $24.56 by 12:10 pm EDT. The price of the underlying was pummeled in 2011, nearly halving from a 52-week high of $39.26 in March down to a two-year low of $21.47 on October 4. Shares are up 14.0% off their October low, and call buyers in the October contract stand to reap the benefits of potential bullish movement in the price of the underlying during the seven trading sessions that remain to expiration. Retail sales figures due out at the end of this week may help of hinder URBN’s recovery.

Trading traffic in Urban call options is heaviest at the Oct. $26 strike call, where more than 3,100 contracts changed hands against previously existing open interest of 1,359 positions. It looks like most of the calls were purchased by one investor for an average premium of $0.15 a-pop. The trader profits at expiration in the event that UBRN’s shares surge 6.5% over the current price of $24.56 to surpass the average breakeven point on the upside at $26.15. Shares in the apparel retailer last traded above $26.15 at the beginning of September.

DB - Deutsche Bank AG – Shares in Deutsche Bank joined those of European and American banks in rallying strongly on optimism Slovakian lawmakers will ultimately ratify the rescue fund plan. DB’s shares are up…

That’s how much Greece is paying today to borrow money for a year! In theory, if you lend Greece $10,000 today, next year they will pay you back $20,800. In THEORY that is because, at 108% – IF they actually borrowed at that rate, you could be very sure that they would not be around to pay you. That’s the joke of this whole thing – we have these insanely unrealistic prices being set on bonds, which only hurts the people who have outstanding ones and need to redeem them as Greece doesn’t actually borrow money for even double-digit interest rates. It’s all a silly, artificial construct that is only useful in spreading panic among investors.

Unfortunately, investor panic is all you need to really destroy the Global economy – as we proved in 2008. As you can see from the chart on the right, we are currently mirroring the same path we took 3 years ago as we head into October and, in fact, our financial sector is performing WORSE than it did when we had ACTUAL major bank and minor country failures – not just rumors of them.

In a speech this week, Josef Ackermann, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, said it was not justifiable for politicians to demand that European banks raise more capital, as Christine Lagarde (DSK’s evil replacement), the head of the International Monetary Fund, had done. “It’s obvious,” he said, “that many European banks would not be able to handle writing down the sovereign bonds they hold on their banking books to market levels.”

But, he said, it would “risk undermining the credibility” of European bailout packages “if politicians were to now send out the signal that they do not believe in the success of those measures.” And, he argued, forcing banks to raise capital now would anger investors by forcing the dilution of current shareholders.

"Risk undermining the credibility of European bailout packages?!?" Is this guy freakin’ kidding? Greece is being "bailed out" and the market rate on their debt…

Europe is down a whopping 3.5% (so far) this morning, opening in free fall after Asia opened down about 2% on the average (but finishing at the day’s lows). Gold flew up to $1,906 before calming down but oil is down to $84.82 at 6:45 am as the Dollar tests it’s highs of 75.15 on the Euro’s fall to $1.41 and the Pound testing $1.61. Any thoughts that the BOJ was done manipulating the Yen are now officially out the window as the Dollar/Yen is STILL 76.80 (around 128.50 on FXY), the same place it’s been since August 8th!

When the World’s 3rd largest economy is manipulating it’s currency on a daily basis, of course the Global markets are going to be thrown into chaos. Every day the BOJ tries to debase their currency they must buy other currencies or foreign stocks or gold or silver or oil – ANYTHING BUT YEN to make the Yen less valuable as compared to another relative basis.

Even so, it’s not working and Japan’s new finance minister said this morning that he will try to forge a consensus among the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries that "excessive yen rises" won’t benefit the world economy when finance officials meet in France later this week. "I am hoping to see us develop a common view that excessive yen rises, as shown by facts and processes in the past, do not necessarily have a positive impact on the global economy," Mr. Azumi told reporters, referring to Friday’s planned meeting of G-7 finance ministers and central bank chiefs in Marseille, France. "At this exchange rate, it is becoming impossible for crucial parts of Japan’s export industry to make profits," he said.

Asian shares were already following US financials downhill on overblown fears of the FHFA lawsuit (see FHFA Friday). I say overblown because the first bank sued, ING, already settled for .20 on the Dollar so banks are reacting as if they already lost $30Bn when it’s much more likely this will all get washed away for $6Bn, or about 2 day’s worth of profits (4%). We’ve already seen the banking community write down over $1Tn in losses and survive to screw us over another day – do we really think this little wrist-slap will end them or is this just another example of retail suckers…

Today we hear from the Murdoch family, owners of the venerated Wall Street Journal as well as Dow Jones, Inc., who will be explaining how their company allegedly broke the rules, lied, threatened and/or bribed almost everyone, engaged in cover-ups, slandered anyone who got in their way and callously ruined the lives of innocent people – all in the name of profits. Already Sean Hoare, the reporter who blew the whistle on Murdoch has been found dead inside his London apartment. "The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing," said a police statement.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said: "The rich are different than you and me – they have more money." As Bill Domhoff pointed out this weekend, when we talk about the rich, we don’t mean the top 1% – people who "only" make $1.6M a year or more. Sure those of us in that group may have a "get out of jail free" card for when we speed and we may get our buildings approved quicker than most and we may get a local ordinance passed here or there but, when you move up to the top 0.1% ($36M or higher per year income) or the top 0.01% ($450M or higher annual income), where Mr. Murdoch lives – not only do you get both national and international laws rewritten to suit your needs (like taking over 100% of the UKs satellite broadcasts), but the other laws don’t even apply to you.

This lack of accountability leads to increasing bad behavior, as evidenced by our…

Why are they bouncing? Why not? We went down and people love to buy those dips and that means they are just going to love this chart, courtesy of Barry Ritholtz’s team. We don’t get our next Case-Shiller data point until the 26th but we did get mortgage applications this week and they are down ANOTHER 6.7%. This is despite the fact that an average 30-year mortgage is still just 4.98%.

I know that we have been trained to ignore supply and demand in commodities as well as to pretend that all prices are inelastic and that American consumers will buy anything at any price because they are generally mindless sheep that you can lead into anything with the right jingle but, if they are not willing to buy a $250,000 home with a 5% mortgage – what’s going to happen when that mortgage is 6%?

At 5%, a $250,000 mortgage has a monthly payment of $1,342.05. At 6% that payment jumps up to $1,498.88 – 10.5% higher! At 7% it’s $1,663.26, 24% higher – that’s the "cost" of housing as rates tick higher but, of course, that will force housing prices even lower to compensate and the Fed will tell us that inflation is low because home prices will be falling faster than food prices are rising – so we have that to look forward to…

We talk about Chinese censorship and control of information but what is this? If a Nigerian Rebel spits at a pipeline or if a Somali Pirate even glances in the direction of an oil tanker – it’s on the front page of the papers (sometimes before it…

I asked that question at the end of November in "Timid Tuesday – Is It Safe" and here we are, 60 days later and up 7.5% and, on the whole, feeling less safe than we did back then, when the Market Oracle and I seemed to be the only people concerned global inflation and sovereign default risks rising rapidly. Although we were playing the market bullishly, with our aggressive $10,000 Virtual Portfolio(and make sure you check out our brand new $25,000 Virtual Portfolio that begins today with a $100,000 goal by December 31st) we decided to try to take from $26,000 to $50,000 by Jan 21st (we only made $35,000), our Breakout Defense Plays (5,000% in 5 Trades or Less) and our Secret Santa’s Inflation Hedges – it was with one hand on the exit door at all times. As I said at the close of Timid Tuesday’s article: "This house of cards is teetering folks – please be careful out there!"

That was 60 days ago. We’re a lot older now and have learned a lot about the World since then. We learned that China, Japan and the IMF are all ready, willing and able to buy the bonds of various EU nations. We learned that the Dollar can still fall 5% (was 81.44 on November 30th) further down despite Europe’s very obvious problems and Japan’s MASSIVE 200% Debt to GDP ratio. We learned that Uncle Ben will never stop printing money (until forced) and we learned that commodities can rise much faster than even our aggressive "Secret Santa" plays anticipated, with every one of our hedges (XHB, XLE, DBA and XLF) already over our year-end targets, all on track for gains well over 100%.

Keep in mind that gold and silver are our defensive plays. In Member Chat yesterday, Jromeha mentioned he’s 80% in cash and 85% short the market on the 20% in play and I said I thought that was an excellent way to play what I felt was a blow-off top after the Fed. We added 2 disaster hedges yesterday, a TZA spread that pays 500% if we get to $17 by

After adding $209Bn (26.3%) in total assets so far this year, the US ETF industry has passed the Trillion Dollar mark led by $31Bn of inflows into fixed income ETFs, of all things as well as $29Bn of inflows into emerging markets, and $21Bn into domestic. Recent outflows have knocked commodity ETFs down to $11.4Bn, miles down from last year’s $32.6Bn inflow – rats leaving a sinking ship, perhaps? That would be very bad news for the firm that bought up 90% of the LME copper supply recently. Do ETF traders really know something or are they a lagging indicator?

“There is little doubt that money chases performance, so the bedrock for significant (ETF asset) growth is clearly a continuing move higher for risk assets,” said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group. He added that growth for ETF assets would essentially be a “tug of war” between hedge funds and retail investors. “As retail investors grow more confident in a continued rally in risk assets, they will shift capital from cash to equity ETFs,” said Mr Colas, who described growth for equity focused hedge funds as the “other side of the growth coin” for ETFs.

Mr Colas noted that hedge funds tended to use ETFs on the short side which was negative for asset growth. He said that as hedge funds expanded their equity trading books, a growing portion would come from from ETF short sales. “This will come through as ‘supply’, dampening demand for new shares.” Barry Ritholtz ponders the end game of the ETF madness and concludes that soon there will be more ETFs than ever:

There is growing speculation surrounding what is believed to be the next breakthrough product in the ETF marketplace: Single stock tracking ETFs. Unlike their index-based cousins, these new single stock trackers would, as the name implies, track only a single stock, trade at exactly the same price as the stock to which they’re linked and consequently eliminate the need for single stock ownership. A top executive with a money management firm who is familiar with his company’s plans to launch such a product and was granted anonymity so he could speak freely, put it this way: “Think about the prospect of, say, a GE tracking ETF — an investor could capture over 99% of the movement of GE

Moody’s warned it may lower Spain’s rating, citing "substantial funding requirements" and France is on Credit Watch and Belgium faces a rate cut at Moody’s as well while Standard and Poor’s is reviewing its assessments of Ireland, Portugal and Greece. The credit default swaps tied to the French bonds imply a rating of Baa1, seven steps below its actual top ranking of Aaa at Moody’s but, if it doesn’t bother the Europeans – why should it bother us?

There is no (ZERO) logic to global markets racing back to all-time highs with the VIX running back to it’s lows as if there is not a care in the World and I don’t say that because I’m a bitter short – we had 16 bullish trade ideas last week and just 8 bearish ones as we simply threw up our hands and played the technicals in Member Chat as the Dow tested that magical 11,500 line. Europe reads the same news we do and markets over there are up 1% this morning despite a pretty poor performance turned in by China, where the Shanghai fell 1.4% (and that was AFTER a 50% recovery into the close) and the Hang Seng fell 0.3% (also big recovery into the close) and the Nikkei fell 0.85% (small afternoon recovery) and the BSE, our global leader into November, weakly flat-lined 5% off its highs.

We’re watching 11,500 on the Dow as well as the 1,225 line on the S&P, which is its "must hold" line that we’ve been tracking on the breakout. Will the Dow break higher or the S&P…

This morning our favorite Banksters goosed the EU markets by upping targets on international mining operators Kazakhmys, Lonmin and BHP and that got the European markets off to a flying start out of the gate, despite the fact that UBS had just DOWNgraded the same sector on Friday. UBS said on Friday that the sector is facing difficult times concerning potential growth with government rulings on mineral leases and the proposed supertax on mining profits in Australia set to hinder metal-based stocks.

We also have a lot of M&A activity, also courtesy of GS, who are leading the resurgence this year with 225 deals to date worth $401.6Bn, accounting for about 20% of all activity going through Goldman’s sticky fingers. In a sign of the times, however, GS only generated $961M in revenues as an M&A advisor as they cut a lot of discounts in order to land the top spot in dealmaking. Although outdealt by GS, MS, Rothchild, JPM and DB all made more in fees than the Uncle Lloyd show.

In a sign of the end of times, GS’s London Headquarters has been taken over by lenders after the owner fell into receivership. GS’s landlord, Antedon, is an offshore real estate firm that bought the building for $500M at the top of the market in 2007 and GS has locked up the building through 2026 at what seems to be not enough money to keep Antedon liquid – it would be very interesting to trace the web of deals that led to this massive default.

Meanwhile, the consortium of Irish investors that own GS’s other London building are also bailing out, this action is coinciding with what Ireland’s Independent says is a campaign by Wall Street Hedge Funds to short sell Irish Government Bonds. US hedge funds Groveland Capital and Corrientes Advisors are thought to have taken major positions against Irish debt. Giant €60bn asset-manager Pictet also revealed that it had earlier bet against Irish government bonds. JP Morgan is also thought to have taken a bearish position on Irish debt. The International Monetary Fund estimated that up to €3bn of Ireland’s debt was being targeted by speculators through the uses of derivatives.

So, plenty of reasons to be cautious this week although it will be hard to cut through the fluff as our hedge fund heroes…

Why have stock-picking fund managers had it so tough over the last few years? A lot of people would say high correlation in the stock market, but that’s only part of the story. According to Goldman Sachs strategists, the real culprit is low dispersion. We’ve talked about this topic here before, but to rehash: Dispersion is a measurement of how stocks act in relation to each other, not just to the overall market.

A high-dispersion environment is where a large number of stocks are zigging and zagging drastically. This means that returns and risk factors are all over the map, which, in theory, would allow skilled...

Click for popup. Clear your browser cache if image is not showing. Comment: Robert Shiller who got the dot-com and housing bubbles right says bonds are next and that’s your gold price spike. www.cnbc.com/...

Date Found: Saturday, 14 February 2015, 02:53:52 AM

Click for popup. Clear your browser cache if image is not showing. Comment: Bill Fleckenstein: Still Not Time to Short the Market - Wait for QE4 - Bill comments that we could easily see another 15-20% correction in the market but that the Fed will either hint at or, more likely, launch Q...

Last week, the major indexes fell back below round-number thresholds that had taken a lot of effort to eclipse. There has been an ongoing ebb-and-flow of capital between risk-on and risk-off, including high sector correlations, which is far from ideal. But at the end of it all, the S&P 500 found itself right back on top of long-standing support and poised for a bounce, and Monday’s action proved yet again that bulls are determined to defend their long-standing uptrend line.

In this weekly update, I give my view of the current market environment, offer a technical analysis of the S&P 500 chart, review our weekly fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten U.S. business sectors, and then offer up some actionable trading ideas, including a sector rotation strategy using ETFs and an enh...

Two former federal agents have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses for stealing digital currency during their investigation of the Silk Road, an underground black market that al...

Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).

We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.

Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.

Kim Parlee interviews Phil on Money Talk. Be sure to watch the replays if you missed the show live on Wednesday night (it was recorded on Monday). As usual, Phil provides an excellent program packed with macro analysis, important lessons and trading ideas. ~ Ilene

The replay is now available on BNN's website. For the three part series, click on the links below.

Part 1 is here (discussing the macro outlook for the markets)
Part 2 is here. (discussing our main trading strategies)
Part 3 is here. (reviewing our pick of th...

Bullish trades abound in Cypress Semiconductor options today, most notably a massive bull call spread initiated in the July expiry contracts. One strategist appears to have purchased 30,000 of the Jul 16.0 strike calls at a premium of $0.89 each and sold the same number of Jul 19.0 strike calls at a premium of $0.22 apiece. Net premium paid to put on the spread amounts to $0.67 per contract, thus establishing a breakeven share price of $16.67 on the trade. Cypress shares reached a 52-week high of $16.25 back on Friday, March 13th, and would need to rally 4.6% over the current level to exceed the breakeven point of $16.25. The spread generates maximum potential profits of $2.33 per contract in the event that CY shares surge more than 20% in the next four months to reach $19.00 by July expiration. Shar...

Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

PSW Members - well, what a year for biotechs! The Biotech Index (IBB) is up a whopping 40%, beating the S&P hands down! The healthcare sector has had a number of high flying IPOs, and beat the Tech Sector in total nubmer of IPOs in the past 12 months. What could go wrong?

Phil has given his Secret Santa Inflation Hedges for 2015, and since I have been trying to keep my head above water between work, PSW, and baseball with my boys...it is time that something is put together for PSW on biotechs in 2015.

Cancer and fibrosis remain two of the hottest areas for VC backed biotechs to invest their monies. A number of companies have gone IPO which have drugs/technologies that fight cancer, includin...

This is a non-trading topic, but I wanted to post it during trading hours so as many eyes can see it as possible. Feel free to contact me directly at jennifersurovy@yahoo.com with any questions.

Last fall there was some discussion on the PSW board regarding setting up a YouCaring donation page for a PSW member, Shadowfax. Since then, we have been looking into ways to help get him additional medical services and to pay down his medical debts. After following those leads, we are ready to move ahead with the YouCaring site. (Link is posted below.) Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated; not only to help aid in his medical bill debt, but to also show what a great community this group is.

Note: The material presented in this commentary is provided for
informational purposes only and is based upon information that is
considered to be reliable. However, neither PSW Investments, LLC d/b/a PhilStockWorld (PSW)
nor its affiliates
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